Mimicking biological room temperature coherent effects and devices

Quantum theory provides a coherent picture of the physical processes at the microscopic scale, which also serves as a basis for the understanding of several scientific fields. Two major ideas of quantum mechanics govern their operation. The first is the quantized behavior of physical properties like energy and momentum. The second is the duality of wave and particle. While the first basic idea is being widely used in our everyday technology, coherent wave properties are not frequently used in real world devices. The traditional paradigm for quantum information processing relies on arrays of pure, isolated quantum bits and their coherent interactions to manipulate quantum superposition and entangled states. This approach has so far been proven to be slower than initially expected. For a long time it was believed that going to a condensed phase while retaining useful quantum behavior would be difficult if not impossible. This has now been disproved in both synthetic and biological systems. Nitrogen vacancy centers in Diamond and quantum dots are a prominent example of such an ‘atom like’ system in a solid. Photosynthetic pigments have shown how coherence can be maintained over hundreds of atoms in a system with low symmetry.Eventually, the role of noise as potential enhancer, rather than destroyer, of quantum information processing, is being now reconsidered in various scenarios, ranging from to quantum simulations and complexity theory to the emerging field of quantum biology. The ultimate goal of my research is to achieve better theory and experiment on quantum many-body systems to clarify under what conditions quantum coherence coexists with noise. This understanding will allow us to identify (experimental) building blocks exhibiting quantum dynamics on a complexity level comparable to macromolecules and will lead to the realization of what we call the Quantum Machine. We apply self-assembled techniques to order hybrid organic / nano crystal devices. By controlling the coupling and quantum level we aim to establish a way to incorporate a quantum mechanics into a room temperature "classical" computation scheme. This will provide quantum control at nanometer scale distances, while maintaining the physical characteristics of available devices.